NIWOT -- Three weeks after the fire, it's still hard for Charlie von Schlesien to look at the house she once planted.

"Sorry," she said softly after a pause for thought that lingered and grew. "It's unusual that I'm at a loss for words."

At least half the home at 6170 79th Avenue had been reduced to wreckage -- blackened wood, gutted rooms, a rubble of shingle and brick and debris. The Jan. 13 fire, thought to have started from an electrical fault in the kitchen, spread quickly through the 1950s portion of the house, added long ago to the original 1920s frame.

But even with much of the teardown and cleanup still ahead, von Schlesien is looking ahead to the rebuilding.

Charlie von Schlesien talks about her Niwot area home that burned last month. She had the house moved from Valmont Road to its current location in 2009 in hopes of making it the center of an organic farm.
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LEWIS GEYER
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"I believe we have to make changes in life for ourselves, to make a positive change," she said. "To stay on the negative, it's not productive. Yes, it was difficult. But when you realize you can empower yourself and 'get back on the horse,' it's very positive, very therapeutic and a very rewarding experience."

Moving in

Von Schlesien moved to Colorado in 1998, returning to the United States after a long stay in Switzerland. But her connection to the house began in 2009, when she realized it would be the perfect center for her organic farm.

The fact that the house was still on Valmont Road? Details. She bought it from the Hoops family that June and had the building moved to its 3-acre Niwot site a month later.

"That's what passion does," she told the Times-Call in a 2009 interview on the night of the move.

Passion was quickly followed by hard work. She had plans to start fruit trees, vegetables, heirloom blueberries and raspberries. But building up the soil took time.

"I honestly did not realize the intensity of the labor that was going to go into that," von Schlesien said. When she began to see more earthworms over the last year and a half, she was ready to cheer -- the clay was starting to yield.

By then, times had gotten a little tight and she decided to rent the place out. She soon found a woman who seemed suitable; together they arranged for her to move in Jan. 15.

The fire began sometime after noon on Jan. 13.

Burning down

A neighbor spotted the smoke at about 1 p.m. Firefighters came quickly, but the two sections of the house -- which had been separated for the move and then rejoined -- made it difficult to chase down the fire.

"There was siding over siding and roof over roof, a fair amount of concealed space that allowed the fire to spread and we couldn't get to it," Steve Pischke, deputy chief of Mountain View Fire Rescue, said the day after the blaze.

Investigators ruled the fire accidental. Von Schlesien said the final report tied the cause to the electrical wiring in the kitchen island, though she still wonders sometimes.

"I know my home," she said. "It still strikes me as odd."

Three days after the fire, her almost-tenant came by with a bouquet of flowers.

"She was displaced, too," von Schlesien said. "I lost the best possible tenant."

Building up

Now von Schlesien wants to get things growing again. On the day of the fire, she said, one of her first questions to Pischke was "How are my trees?" Everything seemed to have survived, she found, except for one damaged apricot tree. And even that might make it.

Charlie von Schlesien moved to Colorado in 1998, returning to the United States after a long stay in Switzerland.
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LEWIS GEYER
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"I think it might just rebound and defy the fire," she said. "But the bees, they're not very happy."

She still hopes to restart the farm, and eventually have some classes there on organic growing. Whether the house itself can survive to be part of those plans will have to wait for insurance agents and contractors, though; a demolition of the building is still far from impossible.

But the rebuilding will come. However long it may have to take.

"It's not a sprint, it's a marathon," von Schlesien said. "You have to have endurance."

Investigators ruled the Jan. 13 fire that gutted Charlie von Schlesien's home accidental. Von Schlesien said the final report tied the cause to the electrical wiring in the kitchen island, though she still wonders sometimes.
(
LEWIS GEYER
)

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